The shift-boss asked you to teach the boy [nineteen and fair skinned]
to shovel coal inside those soot-black walls that rose higher
than you or the boy could ever see over.

Seven years later, Yuenglings lay scattered across the Oak & Maple Bar
as you and the boy [older now by far] summoned beer after beer into existence.
You drank as though escape lay in the dark bottoms of the longnecks.

Since that night [and everything that happened], you’ve dreamt
the boy back shoveling beside you [his steel eyes raccooned by coal ash]
though you tried to teach the boy to imagine himself out of this valley.

You showed the boy hands creased blacker than any slate cut
from the Kittatinnies. You spoke of thirty-six years in the belly
of a plant [you were talking as much to yourself—decades too late].

You imagine the boy driving back roads home that final night after last
call—his hands calloused [like yours] and loose on the wheel, his eyes
bleary. Empty Yuenglings rattling a losing song on the floor of his Ford.